1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus, method, and program for processing information signals of audio information and the like based on an operational input made by a user, for example.
2. Description of the Related Art
From the past, an operation button or a touch panel is generally used when a user performs some kind of an input. In the case of a touch panel, combined with a flat-panel screen of an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) and the like, operational inputs can be made as if actually pressing a button icon or the like displayed on a display screen.
Those input operations presuppose touching or pressurization on a plane of an operation button or a screen of the touch panel. Therefore, limited operations such as touching and pressurization on the plane have been used for the operational inputs. Moreover, applications have been limited to a structure with a touchable plane.
Thus, there have been problems that a vibration or force due to the touching or pressurization inhibits performance of an apparatus and that a contact surface becomes dirty or is damaged.
As a technique for solving the problems described above, the applicant has disclosed an approach detection type information display device in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2008-117371 (hereinafter, referred to as Patent Document 1). In Patent Document 1, a sensor means including a sensor panel on which a plurality of line electrodes or point electrodes are arranged in two orthogonal directions, for example, is used.
Further, the sensor means detects a distance between a sensor panel surface including the plurality of electrodes and a detection target object such as a hand or finger of a user that is spatially apart from the panel surface by detecting a capacitance corresponding to the distance for the plurality of electrodes.
In other words, the capacitance between the plurality of electrodes on the sensor panel and a contact point varies depending on a spatial distance between a position of the hand or finger of the user and the panel surface. In this regard, a threshold value is set to the spatial distance between the position of the finger of the user and the panel surface so that whether the finger has approached or moved away more than that distance can be detected by detecting a change of the capacitance corresponding to the distance.
In particular, Patent Document 1 discloses a technique of improving a capacitance detection sensitivity by changing an interval between the electrodes for detecting the capacitance based on the distance between the detection target object and the sensor panel surface.
According to the techniques described above, a switch input can be made without touching the sensor panel. Moreover, since the plurality of line electrodes or point electrodes are arranged on the sensor panel in the two orthogonal directions, it is possible to spatially detect movements of the hand or finger in directions along the panel surface to thus enable operational inputs to be made in accordance with the spatial movements of the hand or finger.